[Sca-cooks] 2013 Happy Holidays and Santa Stuff

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

I have to Santa myself. I got a HUGE book called "Turkish Cuisine", edited by Arif Belgin & Ozge Samanci, a collection of 20 scholarly essays (not all SCA-period), plus 27 recipes, mostly from the 19th c. It came all the way from Turkey and got here before Christmas, although delivery was not promised before the New Year.

For Christmas dinner i had 3 slices of Extreme Pizza, half pesto-potato, and half Aveiro: "Portuguese linguica, smoked bacon, pepperoncini, roasted red peppers, tomato sauce, mozzarella, and fresh cilantro". It was also what i had for breakfast and lunch on Christmas day, while a local TV station played about 12 hours of logs burning in a fireplace (tho i turned off the Xmas carols they also play).

Saturday the 28th i picked up my daughter at the airport - she was back from several weeks in Mexico, part relaxation, part work. I gave her HER Christmas presents; we had early dinner at P.F. Chang's, which isn't authentic but does have tasty food for a chain; we saw "American Hustle" which i'd heard was good, but was SO MUCH better than i'd thought, i was really impressed and i'm usually not, even by movies i enjoy; then i drove her back to The City where she lives; i had garlic mouth from Chang's food, so i stopped at a local (yes, artisanal) ice cream parlor, ici, and got 2 scoops (quite small), one of mango-lime sorbet, the other of vanilla malt with cocoa nibs. After i finished the sorbet, i went back for some homemade hot fudge sauce for the ice cream. It was thin, a little salty, a little bitter, didn't have additives to make it hard altho it did get thicker as it cooled, absolutely perfect.

Planning to got to some friends' house Jan 1 - they invite people over for a day of gaming - mostly board games. And lots of other friends in attendance.

I also had some annoying virus for a week from before Christmas until yesterday. Finally gone. Was only really bad for 2 days. I even slept for 8 hours a couple nights! I hardly ever sleep that much!

somebody sometimes called Urtatim